


I’ve Looked Around Enough To Know (You’re The One I Want To Go Through Time With)

by PlayingTheGameOfThrones



Series: A Song of Lions and Wolves [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Brief Mentions Of Rape, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt and comfort, Some light smut, takes place between episode two and episode four
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-02-10 20:42:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18668011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlayingTheGameOfThrones/pseuds/PlayingTheGameOfThrones
Summary: Tyrion shares a conversation with Bran that reveals his marriage to Sansa is still valid, bringing back old feelings they both thought were long gone.





	1. A Conversation

Out of the corner of his eye, Tyrion could see Brandon Stark, alone in the corner of the room, confined to his wheelchair. The boy had changed considerably since the last time Tyrion had seen him, back in Winterfell when he had given the boy his design of a saddle the boy could use to ride his horse although he had been crippled. That was to be expected, of course; it was many years ago now, and he suspected he had changed from the person he had been that day in Winterfell as well. But there was something different about Brandon Stark, something that couldn’t be explained by the years that had passed. Tyrion wondered what the boy had been through, what he had seen, to become the man he saw in front of him now. No one else seemed to take much notice of the cripple aside from his siblings, and even they seemed to skirt around him, afraid of his strange demeanor and almost otherworldly air.

Well, Tyrion was used to people skirting around him too, afraid of the little monster and what he could do to them. He decided he would talk with Brandon, as everyone else paired off and went in separate directions. After all, he still had a soft spot in his heart for cripples, bastards, and broken things; that, at least, had not changed.

“Brandon Stark,” Tyrion said, stepping closer to the boy – _man_ , he reminded himself. He must be nearly seventeen now. “I suspect you’ve an interesting story.”

Brandon gave his version of a smirk. “I suppose some would call it interesting. I’m not sure if you would. It’s a very long story.”

“Well,” Tyrion replied, “it’s a good thing we’re locked in a castle, surrounded by the dead.”

“It isn’t my story you need to hear,” Bran said, tilting his head.

“No?” Tyrion asked, sitting in the chair beside Bran. “Whose story should I hear, then?” He unclipped his skein of wine from his belt and took a swig.

“Your wife’s.”

Tyrion nearly choked on the wine. Bran watched him impassively. “I-I don’t have a wife.”

“You don’t believe that.”

Tyrion could feel his cheeks beginning to redden like a lovesick schoolboy’s. It was true; Tyrion had suspected that his marriage to Sansa was still in place. _One flesh, one heart, one soul,_ that was what the High Septon had said.

_That was as much of a jape as cloaking her under your protection. You were unable to protect her, just as you were unable to keep her._

“A High Septon must annul a marriage.” Bran’s words brought Tyrion back to the present, to a dimly lit room in Winterfell at the end of the world. “The High Septon did no such thing.”

It was as Tyrion had suspected, then. His marriage to Sansa was still binding.

“But you must understand something about my sister,” Bran said in that strange, detached voice he had picked up since the last time Tyrion had seen the boy. “Ramsay raped her. He tortured her. He shamed her. She may cloak herself in armor, but there are still scars beneath.”

Tyrion felt himself swallow hard and he found himself gripping the handle of Bran’s chair, as if to keep him anchored to the earth. It was all too easy to imagine the tortures the Bastard of Bolton had for Sansa, for his wife.

 _I should have been there to protect her_.

“You’re here now,” Bran said, as if he had read Tyrion’s thoughts. “You can protect her now.”

  
***

  
Tyrion sat by the fire with his brother Jaime at his side. Truth be told, he had only been half-listening to what Jaime had been saying; his mind swirled with what Bran had told him. _You can protect her now._ He didn’t know if the boy was right. He hoped he was.

“Do you miss it?” Jaime’s voice brought Tyrion back from his reverie.

Shae’s face flashed behind his eyelids, and he tensed in his seat. “Of course I miss it.”

“Well, my golden lion days are done,” Jaime replied. “But whore-mongering is still an option for you.”

Tyrion flinched, and looked into the flames, seeing only Sansa’s fiery red hair and her sad blue eyes, only now understanding the pain that lay behind them. A pain he hoped he could soothe. “No. It’s not. Things would be easier if it were.”

Tyrion could feel Jaime’s inquisitive gaze settle on him, but he did not look up from the fire. 


	2. The Army of the Dead

Sansa stood on the battlements of Winterfell beside her sister and watched as, one by one, the lights of the Dothraki’s arakhs flickered out, their screams fading to bone-chilling silence.

 _You have seen a battle before,_ she reminded herself as she felt the cold pierce through her furs, a cold that she knew did not come from the snow. _You have seen a man die before. You yourself have ordered the execution of two men._

She felt her sister tense beside her, and Arya turned to face her elder sister. In her hand was a Valyrian steel dagger.

“Get down to the crypt,” she commanded.

Something inside Sansa stirred. Fear. She knew her sister was right.

_I am the Lady of Winterfell. I should stand with them. If they are dying, they are dying in my name._

“I’m not abandoning my people,” she insisted, but even she could hear the tremble in her voice. She knew Arya could, too.

“Take this and go.” Arya shoved the hilt of the dagger into Sansa’s hand.

Sansa was surprised at the weight of it, at the chill of the handle. She could feel the fear grabbing hold of her throat, and she felt she could barely speak as she answered her sister. “I don’t know how to use it.”

“Stick them with the pointy end.”

Something inside Sansa wanted to argue, wanted to fight to stay on the battlements no matter what happened, if the dead won and the living lost. _They are fighting for Winterfell. I should, at the least, stay and see them fall._

But she knew Arya was right. If the living won, they would need people to rebuild Winterfell, to rebuild the world, if need be. And Sansa knew she had to be one of those people. She turned and fled for the crypts.

The first face she saw upon entering the hall of her dead ancestors was a familiar one, perhaps the most familiar face besides her own family’s. Tyrion looked up at her, searching for a sign of hope in her face, that the battle was going well, that all was not lost.

She wasn’t certain what he saw, but he unclipped the skein of wine from his belt and drank deeply before joining Varys in a corner of the dimly lit room.

Sansa could feel the eyes of her people upon her, and she searched for something to say to the fearful women and children, and the men who could not fight. It was not so easy now as it had been all those years ago in King’s Landing, during the Battle of the Blackwater. She knew her mother’s gods well, and had known those were the gods of the women in King’s Landing, too. Here, the people kept her father’s gods, the old gods of the weirwood trees and the North, the old gods that used her brother as a messenger, the old gods she had never been able to understand. 

She mustered her strength in spite of her doubts, and began to speak. “Don’t be afraid,” she said, her voice echoing down the long hall of the dead. “The old gods are watching over us all, and this castle. They will keep us safe. As will the brave men and women fighting for us.”

A few of the women smiled and seemed to be comforted, but even more stared at her with blank looks. Sansa had no words left for them, and settled down beside one of the crypts. She looked up from her hands in her lap – _so useless_ – to find Tyrion standing and staring at the entrance to the crypts.

“I should be out there,” he said. “I fought in the Battle of the Blackwater. If we were out there, we might be able to see something the others cannot. If I was in the battle–“

“You would die,” Sansa found herself saying, though his words echoed her own thoughts. “There’s nothing we can do.” She was trying to make herself believe her own words as much as she was trying to convince Tyrion.

Tyrion turned back towards her, tossing his empty skein of wine aside and grabbing another before standing beside her. “You might be surprised at the lengths I’d go to to avoid joining the army of the dead. I can think of no organization less suited to my talents.”

In spite of herself, Sansa felt herself smile. Her husband – _former_ husband, she reminded herself – had always been able to make her smile. “Witty remarks won’t make a difference.”

He gave her a strange look then, as if she had hurt him. That had not been her intention. She continued, hoping to soothe the blow she might have inadvertently given. “That’s why we’re down here. None of us can do anything.”

Tyrion looked at her as if he didn’t believe her. The thought suddenly struck her that he knew her better than she knew herself, but she kept talking, dismissing the thought to the back of her mind. “It’s the truth. It’s the most heroic thing we can do now. Look the truth in the face.”

In her mind’s eye, she saw the arakhs of the Dothraki going up in flames, saw them charging towards the dead. And again she saw the darkness, and heard the silence that sunk deep into her bones.

“Maybe we should have stayed married,” she heard Tyrion say softly, and she looked up in surprise. _Does he still think about it the way I still think about it?_

“You were the best of them,” she admitted, and she hoped he knew what she meant – not that he was better than Ramsay, though of course he was, always had been – but that he was the best man she knew aside from her brothers and her father, that he had been the only person she could trust when they were both prisoners in King’s Landing. She saw their stay together there for what it was now – her a prisoner of the king, and he the prisoner of his father and his sister.

“What a terrifying thought,” Tyrion remarked with a wry smile, and Sansa returned it. He understood as well as she what she had meant, even if he would not say so.

It was then that Sansa remembered they were no longer in King’s Landing, that she was the Lady of Winterfell now and he had come to her castle at a stranger’s side, a stranger who meant to rip the North away from her and her family again, and her smile disappeared. “It wouldn’t work between us,” she said softly, though the words pained her.

“Why not?” Tyrion asked, and she could hear the emotion he was unable to keep out of his voice.

“The dragon queen.” Sansa still couldn’t bring herself to say the woman’s name. “Our divided loyalties would become a problem.”

“Yes,” came a voice from the shadows. Sansa and Tyrion both turned to look, and found the woman, Missandei, who was always at the dragon queen’s side. “Without the dragon queen there would be no problem at all. We’d all be dead already.”

***

Hours and hours had passed when the sounds of screaming and fighting traveled down the hall to the crypts. Sansa brought herself to her feet, her breathing growing rapid. _The dead are in the castle_ , she thought to herself. _Winterfell is falling. My home is falling._

It was then that she heard the screams of her people in the crypts, and turned to find the dead had begun crawling out of their graves, the dead of her ancestors and her kinsmen, twisting their rotting bodies this way and that to pull themselves out of the ground where some of them had lain for centuries.

A dead woman stepped in front of her then, her grey, rotting skin sagging from her bones, her eyes that unearthly blue, a crown of dead flowers in her stringy hair. _My aunt Lyanna_ , Sansa thought, strangely detached, as the dead woman screamed and reached her hands out towards her, meaning to choke the life from her. 

A warm hand grabbed hers and she found herself being whisked behind the statue of her father. “What–“ she started to say, when she saw Tyrion beside her, also huddling behind her father’s crypt, breathing heavily and fear in his eyes.

In silence, they listened to the screams of her people as Sansa felt her breath quickening. She shut her eyes, but all she could see was Ramsay Bolton’s face in front of her own, with his own unearthly blue eyes. _Stay grounded,_ she tried to remind herself, _your people need you_ , but she could feel herself beginning to let the panic and the memories sweep her away, where she would be of no use to anyone at all.

“Sansa,” she heard Tyrion whisper, and she opened her eyes to find him staring intently at her. “Stay with me.” He took her hand into his own and squeezed it.

She could feel her panic dissipating, and she knew that these were their final moments, as the screams of her people began to fade. The dead were winning. She gazed back into her husband’s eyes, and willed her own to tell him everything she could not. _I love you,_ they said. _Thank you._

As if he could hear her thoughts, she watched as Tyrion brought her hand to his lips, and pressed a gentle kiss to her gloved knuckles.

As if her husband’s kiss had restored her last bit of strength, she thought to herself, _I will die fighting for my people_ , pulling out the dagger her sister had given her, the sister she would never see again. _I will die fighting alongside the man I love._

Tyrion pulled out his own dagger, and they brought themselves to their feet, still clinging to each other with the hands that did not hold the Valyrian steel.

Without warning, Sansa felt herself being wrenched away from Tyrion, and she fell to the cold ground, the breath knocked out of her chest. Her dagger lay about a foot away from her, and a dead man stood above her.

She gazed into his cold blue eyes, and realized with a chill down her spine who was looking at her as if she were an animal to skin and eat. _Father_.

Someone, most likely Maester Luwin after Littlefinger had returned her father’s body to Winterfell, had sewn Lord Eddard Stark’s head back onto his shoulders, but after so many years the stitches had begun to fray and fall apart, and Sansa could see the gaping, bloody wound that had ended her father’s life in front of her. A sob caught in her throat as she stared into her father’s eyes, praying to any god that would hear her that he would recognize her. But of course he didn’t; he had been dead for seven years. He advanced on her, and with tears in her eyes, she grabbed the Valyrian steel dagger, and plunged it into her father’s heart.

When Tyrion found her after the battle had been won, she was crumpled on the cold floor of the crypts beside the corpse of her father, the Valyrian steel dagger still clutched in her hand.

Tyrion slowly extended his hand to his wife, and she looked up with eyes red from sobbing. “It was my father,” she said, taking her husband’s hand in her own and allowing him to pull her to her feet.

Tyrion searched for words that would comfort her, and found none. Remembering his wife’s words from earlier in the night – _it’s the most heroic thing we can do now: look the truth in the face_ – he simply said, “I know, Sansa. But we survived.”

He felt her squeeze his hand, and though she said nothing, he knew she understood.


	3. Now Your Watch Is Ended

Tyrion sat at the high table in Winterfell’s great hall, his dragon queen at his side, and he wondered how he had managed to end up here.

His eyes scanned the dimly lit hall, filled with tables and tables crammed full of the survivors of the war for the dawn. Northerners and southerners alike drank and ate and rejoiced at being alive together. Tyrion had never seen anything like it. He felt as if he must be dreaming. How had he, the imp, the dwarf of Casterly Rock, ended up here, at the table reserved for the lords and ladies of Winterfell, Daenerys Targaryen beside him and Jon Snow and Sansa Stark beside her?

It was shocking enough that he had survived the army of the dead’s attack in the crypts; he still couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that he was sitting in such a place of high honor in Winterfell of all castles, that had once been ruled by Lord Eddard and Catelyn Stark, one of whom was merely cordial to him and the other of whom had kidnapped and put him on trial for a murder he did not commit.

It was then that he heard his father’s voice in his head, though his father was long dead now, dead at Tyrion’s own hand: _Sansa is the heir to Winterfell. If you marry her, you will be the Lord of Winterfell and your children will be the Lords of Winterfell as well as Casterly Rock._

A chill went down his spine at his father’s words. His father may have been several years in his grave by now, but his ghost often seemed to hang just over Tyrion’s head, or in the shadows of his bedchamber when he tried to sleep. Tyrion remembered the moments he had shared with his wife – former wife – the night before in the crypts, and he leaned forward, looking past Daenerys, trying to catch a glimpse of his wayward bride where she sat between Jon and Bran.

However, instead of the blue eyes and red hair of the Lady of Winterfell, he could see only the darkness of her bastard brother Jon, who caught his gaze and gestured that he should come to him.

Swallowing hard, Tyrion pushed back from the table and went to Jon, feeling Daenerys’s eyes on him the entire way. Suddenly the long table felt even longer, and his legs too short to reach his destination. It was as if Daenerys’s gaze on his back and Jon’s gaze on his front held all the contempt the dead Starks must feel for him, a Lannister of the Rock, presuming to sit at their high table, to slay their corpses in their crypt. He had felt uneasy at all times since coming here, and he hoped Jon had something more pleasant to say than what he was expecting.

 _I know how you think of my sister,_ he imagined Jon saying, storm clouds in his dark eyes. _I know what you thought about doing to her in the crypt. I know you slew my ancestors when they rose from their graves. A Lannister will never belong in Winterfell._

“My lord,” Tyrion said when he reached Jon after what felt like an eternity but had, in reality, only been a few feet. “You wanted to speak with me?”

Instead of the anger and disgust he expected to hear, Jon’s voice was soft and almost conspiratorial, as if they were sharing a secret. “Lord Tyrion. I was wondering if you could find my sister Sansa.”

Tyrion felt his face burning and he prayed to all the gods he didn’t believe in that he wasn’t blushing. “My lord, surely if she has left the table she wants to be left alone–“

“My sister and I may have been parted for many years,” Jon interrupted. “But I know her well. As do you, I think. She has been upset since last night. I thought you might be able to comfort her.”

Tyrion opened his mouth to protest, but Jon held up his hand.

“She trusts you. I think you know that.”

Tyrion closed his mouth and nodded. “Where do you think the Lady Sansa may have retreated to?”

“Likely her bedchamber,” Jon said, his eyes taking on a faraway look. “It had been our father’s and her mother’s. She insisted I take it, but she is the Lady of Winterfell, not me. It belongs to her.”

“Where–“

Jon smiled slightly, the most he ever seemed to smile. “Down the hall. The last door to the left.”

Tyrion walked slowly down the long hall of rooms until he stopped beside one door that was slightly ajar. “Lady Sansa?” he asked, peering around the corner.

He saw her standing at the window in only her shift, smoothing down her shining red hair with a silver-backed brush. Tyrion swallowed hard and knew he was blushing. He hadn’t seen her like this – without her armor of courtesy and the long black dresses she had taken to wearing – since their wedding night, so long ago now.

_I won’t share your bed. Not until you want me to._

_What if I never want you to?_

_And so my watch begins._

The memory wrapped icy fingers around his heart and he began to retreat. _She didn’t want you then, Imp. Why would she want you now?_

Before he could slip out of sight, Sansa turned to face him. Beneath her white shift he could see all the curves of her body, illuminated by the pale sunlight streaming through the window at her back. She was a woman grown now, and she was just as beautiful as Tyrion had always known she would be someday. “Forgive me, my lady–“

“Come in, Tyrion.”

Tyrion could feel his legs shaking beneath him as he entered the room.

“Close the door.”

He did as he was bid, but continued to stand awkwardly in the threshold. _What could she possibly want from me?_

“I see the way you look at me,” Sansa said, setting down her brush on her vanity and stepping closer. “I know you have kept your vows to me. Not only to protect me, but not to lie with other women.”

“How–“ Tyrion started, but Sansa finally closed the distance between them and placed a soft kiss on his lips. When she pulled away, he could still feel the heat of her body radiating off her and onto himself, as if she were the sun.

“Now your watch is ended, Tyrion,” she said, this time kissing him with more fervor, her fingers working at the laces of his doublet.

He clasped her hands in his and she pulled away, eyebrows furrowed. He searched her face. “My lady, are you certain this is what you want?”

Sansa’s lips curled into a smile that sent pleasant shivers down his spine. He could feel himself beginning to harden. “Sansa, Tyrion. My name is Sansa.” And then she was kissing him again, and with one hand she led him to her bed.

For the first time, Tyrion Lannister no longer felt unwelcome in Winterfell. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all enjoyed this little story! I plan to turn it into a series, so I hope you will stick around for the next installment.


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